Mind Wrinkles

Photo Repair: Clone Replacement

2009-08-09T18:12:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when taking a multitude of photos, none of them will really come out right, but parts of the set look better than others. To create a good picture, we take all the good parts of the similar photos and weave them together.

First, open both the similar photos in photoshop. Choose one of the photos, and go to image>canvas size and double the height, selecting it to expand downwards.
Paste the second image in the area of the new white space created. I like to merge the layers to ease cloning.
Use guide lines to create a cross beam of where you want to clone in from the first photo. Find the exact same location on the second photo and mark it with a cross beam too. In my pictures, I used the cross section of the pillar for my location.
Switch to the clone tool with a large soft brush. Hit the alt key and select the area of your source, at the cross of the two guide lines. Go to the other picture and start cloning in as you see fit. You can see the focus change as you brush. The nice thing is that you don’t have to hold the clone tool down, you can release, and your spot will be remembered, allowing you more flexibility where you clone in.
The new areas might have a different focus, but if done correctly, everything will match up perfectly.
Use the healing brush tool to clean up any hard lines that formed. In my case, the other image was shorter than the real one, so I have to remove the shoe bottoms.
Finally, crop out the final image. You are complete.If this tutorial was helpful, check out some of the advertisements on the sides, maybe they will help you with photoshop :/?

Abstract Art: Colored Smoke

2009-08-06T08:05:00.000-07:00

This tutorial will be a quick method on how to make an abstract smokey wall paper.

Create a new document, I like using the size 1280x800 because it is my screen size.
Hit D to get the colors back to default, and do filter>render>clouds.
Do filter>render>difference clouds, and then hit ctrl+f fives times to repeat to create a diversified cloud field.
Do filter>stylize>glowing edges.
Create a new layer and paint on it. When done, change the layer mode to color, and you are completed.

Tip: Try inverting the colors at the end, that can be fun at times.

Photo Effects: Cartoon Illustration

2009-08-06T06:37:00.000-07:00

This tutorial will cover how to quickly change a photo into an illustration.

Open your picture. Duplicate the background layer and name it outline. Desaturate the layer (so when the edges are made it will be in gray scale) by hitting ctrl+shift+u.
Create the rough outline applying a find edge filter, filters>stylize>find edges.
There are many little specs as well of variations of gray in this photo. To eliminate that, we go to image>adjustments>levels. The closer the black and white sliders are too each other, the less shades of gray will exist. For each image, the setting will be variable, but getting most of it out should be simple.
Hide the outline layer and duplicate the background layer again, naming it color. Put it in the middle of the layers.
Go to the filter>filter gallery. First apply a cutout filter, keeping in mind you want detail in the color. The amount used will be variable for each photo.
Add a new effect layer in the filter gallery and add a dry brush affect too. When satisfied with the coloring, hit okay.
Make the outline layer visible again, and change its layer mode to darken.
A tip for cleaning up, if you have speckle spots in the picture, paint white on the outline layer where they are at to eliminate them. You can also redo the coloring on the color layer with a paintbrush. When you are done, congratulations, you have a cartoon illustration.

C# Automation Example

2009-08-05T06:33:00.000-07:00

On the form needs to be a Web Browser control named webBrowser and a button named button1. A particular catch to using the web browser control is that you don’t have to take care of session ids or cookies, it is all taken care of already for you. For more complex automation, a task system has to be set up.

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.ComponentModel;

using System.Data;

using System.Drawing;

using System.Text;

using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace Automation_Example

{

public partial class Form1 : Form

{

public Form1()

{

InitializeComponent();

}

//Start the process when the button is clicked.

private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

webBrowser.Navigate("www.gmail.com");

}

//After the button is clicked, we have to wait for the document to fully load to use it.

private void webBrowser_DocumentCompleted(object sender, WebBrowserDocumentCompletedEventArgs e)

{

Automation();

}

private void Automation()

{

//Get all the input tags on the document

HtmlElementCollection elements = webBrowser.Document.GetElementsByTagName("input");

foreach (HtmlElement element in elements)

{

/*ToLower makes everything more compatible, but it

* is important to look at the source of the webpage

* you are trying to automate so that you will know

* the names of the tags specifically*/

if (element.Name.ToLower() == "email here") //Look for the tag named email

{

element.SetAttribute("value", "email"); //Insert text to it

}

if (element.Name.ToLower() == "passwd") //Look for a password input

{

element.SetAttribute("value", "password here"); //Insert text

}

/*The input tgs are parsed in order, and because the

* sign in button is below the other forms, by simply

* looping through the controls in order assures us it

* will be clicked after the form is filled out */

if (element.Name.ToLower() == "signin")

{

element.InvokeMember("click");

}

Photo Repair: Flowers

2009-08-02T12:37:00.000-07:00

This will be a quick tutorial on how to fix damaged flower petals in a rather quick way.

Locate the flowers wilting parts.
The areas on the inside of the flower will be easier to fix than the edges, so we will start on the inside and work out. Select the patch selection tool, and make sure it is set to source. Circle the interior decayed petal, and then drag the patch down to a healthy part of the petal. The instant results are pretty stunning.
Repeat this for as much of the interior petal as possible, or use the healing brush tool to fix small specks. No pic
Zoom into the edge parts that are damaged. Because a petal bends and curves at many angles, a different technique needs to be used. There are two ways to handle this.

First would be to cut out sections of petals and move and rotate them onto the top of the damaged pieces. After, they two layers would be merged and the seam would be healed with a healing brush.
Second, the way we will use, is to use the rotate source of the clone stamp tool. Select a healthy part of the petal and alt+click it. Then, go to the clone source window, windows>clone source, and change the rotation angle. As you change the angle the picture will change for you, so you know what you are getting.

Repeat step four multiple times to complete all the edges. You will have to shift rotation to fill in the edges and make the petal meet seamlessly.
Squint hard and look for abnormal ‘lines’ left in from the cloning process. Take a healing brush and go over them so they are invisible.
When you are done, zoom out. If it looks good, congratulations, you are complete! With a pretty flower without damage.

Plantimals: Alligator Strawberry

2009-08-01T20:44:00.000-07:00

Alright, this tutorial will be a basic guide on how to create a plantimal, or a combination of an animal and some form of vegetation. After searching the web for some high quality photos, I found this photo of a strawberry from
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Strawberry.jpg

and another high resolution picture of an alligator from http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/04_02/alligatorL_468x343.jpg .

I picked the middle strawberry to add the head too, but quite obviously the alligator head won’t fit in it alone, so I increased canvas size to 2240x2500 to compensate.

The background is repairable for later. Often it helps to work in two windows, one small and one zoomed, this can be accomplished through the Window>Arrange>New Window menu item. Now, onto the tutorial.

First, place the alligator head onto the strawberry as a new layer, and rotate and resize it to where you want it to be. It helps to lower the layer’s opacity to 60 or so to see what you are doing.
Next, it is time to cut out the alligator head. I like to use the pen tool so I can have exact human precision on the teeth at the end. Towards the nape of the neck, you can use the eraser tool with a soft edge, not all of it will be needed. Also, when cutting, using a feather of 1px often softens everything up a lot.
Once the alligator is cut out, duplicate the layer with the head on it, and control click it to select it all. Hide the original layer, it will be used later. Fill the new alligator head layer with black three times over to eliminate any remnants of alligator. All we want is a silhouette.
First, select the layer with the strawberry on it, and then go to the clone stamp tool. Alt+Click near the bottom of the strawberry. Then, Ctrl+Click the layer with the silhouette to confine where you can paint, and then select the layer itself. Start from the bottom and fill it in with strawberry texture. If the texture runs out, repeat the steps and work at a high location.
It is time to give the alligators mouth some depth, so we are going to remove the top of the strawberry with our friend, the clone tool. Go to the layer the background is on, and duplicate it to get rid of the lock.
Duplicate the alligator head again, and move the new layer to the top. Add a new Layer>Layer Mask to it, and begin to pain out the skin, leaving only the mouth and the eye visible. Also, marking out part of the inside of the mouth might be helpful. Feathering at the edges is helpful.
Finally, duplicate the alligator head layer again, and move it to the top. Change its blend mode to soft light. Complete! A plantimal, with the mixed textures.
To fill in that ugly white gap, you can slowly clone it in to get a nice result, but, seeing that it would take me more time to clone it in than to make the plantimal, I got lazy and scribbled it in. Perhaps I am a lazy artist.

Hope this was helpful, if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

The creation of the Blog

2009-08-01T20:37:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my personal blog! I hope to put lots of content on here, but we will see how that goes. The first thing I would like to address, is the title. According the Merriam Webster, a wrinkle is something new (definition 2). At first, I wanted to do Brain Creation, but creation was boring, so the thesaurus gave me wrinkle. Brain wrinkle was already taken, so the word Mind was my next choice. Hopefully reading this blog will gave your mind many new wrinkles to think about :).

~Zeller